RE:[sap-log-mm] Does anyone have a simple MM01 (replacing) tool available?

Posted by Sap Land Thursday, 19 May 2011 02:07

Posted by dklerkx
on May 19 at 5:07 AM

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your long answer. The customer has not that many articles but when creating a new article they have to walk through too many screens and too many fields with on top of that many dependencies, if value is this, than fill that bla bla.

They are already using create by copying from another material and only directly into the system.
I will look into the item of making (more) fields mandatory, optional or suppress them, thank you for that (what I of course already knew but sometimes there occurs a severe memory loss ;-) , we call that Alzheimer Light!!) .

Actually that's really the question if you think of it!
Thx!!
Best regards, Denise

---------------Original Message---------------
From: PMassey48
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 7:21 AM
Subject: Does anyone have a simple MM01 (replacing) tool available?

Denise

This is a very interesting question which in reality requires a little more
knowledge of your clients situation, however, I have a few thoughts that I
hope will be useful.

Your client wishes to simplify MM01, so where is the complexity? Is it that
there are too many screens and fields, or is it that there is a high level
of product creation?

The question of the number of screens is dependent on the functionality
required from the SAP implementation. This should have been addressed at the
configuration stage so that those screens that do not contribute to the
functionality requirements should be suppressed. The same argument applies to
fields, although here you can flag fields as mandatory, optional, or
suppressed (masked). Certainly using the mandatory setting allows users to pass
through screens quickly as the mandatory setting flags only those required
fields. The definition of screens and fields can be configured at the article
type level (FERT, HAWA, etc.)

At any data take on, there must be routines developed to transfer by batch
into SAP. These routines can be used at any future time if it is easy to
input to a suitable database format for the batch interface. However, if
there are frequent product creations indicating a dynamic business environment
I would not suggest this method.

Materials can be created by copy from another material. Therefore if the
customer can define "key" materials to be used as base materials then these
could be copied to a new material and MM02 then used to amend the newly
copied material before it is activated. This does however require a clear
policy on the status fields. It also requires care where you have multiple
sales organisations and planning rules.

If there are frequent creations of variants of a basic product then look at
the use of configurable materials (KMAT). These can be very useful where
you are cutting material to specific non-standard lengths, or applying
different colour coatings to a basic product.

If the creation is for quotations only, then you could treat the KMAT
products as "quotation" only products that cannot be sold. Such generic products
would simply require a modifications to the various descriptions, but
these could be amended at the quotation stage so that there is no need to use
MM02 at all.

You may find that the product creation under MM01 can be performed by one
department with dummy values for certain fields, but then the responsibility
passes to other departments to activate their part of the product by
amendments to their dummy fields through MM02. I used this method for planning
values where the complexity could not be managed by the product creation
team and had to be validated by the planners.

Again, without knowing the specifics it is difficult to give a definitive
answer to what may be a procedural problem rather than a SAP problem. If the
SAP implementation is relatively new, then it is normal that MM01 will
take an inordinate length of time - from my experience the users find it a
real problem at the outset as it will be very slow. However, after a few
months the users become accustomed to the screens and develop routines to speed
up the process quite significantly.

Paul Massey

email@removed
07921 850396

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